The Sunday after the most insane week I thought our school had probably ever had (yes, even more insane than when the SMARTs and everything had happened last year), Vince, Staples, and I were playing catch in the playground in Vince’s trailer park. We were playing catch because Staples had said, “Having a catch is like the Super Bowl of Big Brother activities.” But also, it was sort of nice to escape the recent insanity with some relatively mindless Sunday afternoon baseball.

Even if Staples kept trying to kill us.

We had a classic triangle going. I stood near the sandbox (the very same one that Vince and I had used as our first-ever office almost seven years ago), Vince stood about twenty yards away near his trailer, and Staples was standing about twenty yards from each of us in front of this creepy small scarecrow that Mrs. King had erected next to her small garden.

At first we had all laughed at the small but oddly ominous scarecrow, but as the afternoon went on, I saw Staples stealing small glances over his shoulder at it. It was making him nervous. It was kind of bizarre and hilarious to see Staples getting so jittery near an inanimate object, but at the same time it only made the scarecrow seem even creepier.

I maybe would have even laughed at him if he hadn’t been trying to kill us, like I mentioned before. Every time he threw the ball to either Vince or me, he basically just rifled it as hard as he could. And he could throw pretty hard. I was guessing he even could have ended up playing at least college baseball if he hadn’t gotten mixed up in the crime world as a kid and if his life had gone differently.

He laughed the first few times when it caught us off-guard and we had to duck or flinch as we caught the ball. But after a few times Vince and I were handling his fireballs with ease. That wasn’t to say that my glove hand wasn’t sore, but we were both good enough to at least make the catch every time without flinching.

Anyways, after a little bit we both started throwing back at him pretty hard ourselves. He handled our throws even better than we caught his, mostly because we couldn’t throw nearly as hard as he could, not even Vince. All in all, it was the most tense and hostile game of catch that I’d ever participated in.

But then, Vince threw Staples one of his signature circle changeups. It’s by far Vince’s best pitch. It looks just like a slightly slower fastball until it gets to you and just falls off the table. Not many seventh graders can throw a pitch that breaks as much as that one does. So when it got to Staples, even if he had recognized it for something other than a fastball, he still likely would have missed it.

The ball sailed right under his glove, hit the fake trailer park playground grass, and bounced up and nailed the scarecrow right in the leg.

“Ow!” yelled the scarecrow.

I swear Staples must have jumped seven feet straight into the air. Then he turned and backpedaled away from the talking scarecrow so quickly he tripped and fell back onto his butt. Vince and I would have been laughing if we also weren’t pretty spooked ourselves.

Then the scarecrow climbed down from its post and took a step toward us. Its motionless burlap face with button eyes was fixed into a mouthless and dead stare. Staples was almost shaking, he looked so freaked out.

He climbed to his feet and took several steps back.

“If you come any closer, I’ll tear your head off,” Staples said, although it wasn’t too effective of a threat since you could plainly hear the fear in his voice.

The scarecrow stopped walking and then reached up and tore its own face off.

“Please don’t do that,” the scarecrow said calmly.

But of course it wasn’t actually a scarecrow. It was Tyrell.

“Who are you?” Staples demanded.

“He’s a friend of ours,” I said.

“Man, you guys have some weird friends,” Staples said, shaking his head. “Who does that, seriously?”

I tried not to laugh. Tyrell, to his credit, just shrugged and smiled.

“What did you find out?” I asked. “Wait, let me guess. All of the sabotage of school events is somehow related to Jimmy after all, right?”

“It seems like it,” Tyrell said.

“Ha-ha, see? Who needs you? We can figure things out for ourselves!” Vince joked. “It’s like my grandma told me once, ‘If you can see any of your own bones without a mirror, then everything is definitely not okay. Drink a milkshake immediately! And then call a banker!’”

We all laughed except for Staples. He stared at Vince and then said, “What the heck is wrong with your grandma?”

“She’s a genius, that’s all.”

“Anyway,” Tyrell said, “do you know how everything is related?”

“Hey, I gotta pay you for something,” I said.

He nodded and then continued, “Well, turns out that I spotted some younger kids hanging around our school a lot. I saw some sneaking around right before all of the recent incidents, like the recital and the swimming pool bloodbath massacre. And these kids definitely don’t go to our school, Mac.”

This was all way too confusing. Why would another school be randomly sabotaging us?

“So how is that connected to Jimmy?” Vince asked. “I mean, he can’t be paying them because those things are all causing him problems, too.”

Tyrell shrugged. “Well, then this next part will really surprise you. I caught Jimmy making cash payments to some of the same kids who I saw sneaking around the pool right after the swimming-pool bloodbath.”

I shook my head. This just didn’t make sense.

“No way,” I said.

“I’ve got video evidence if you really need to see it,” Tyrell said.

Vince and I looked at each other. His head looked even more like it was about to explode than mine felt.

“So where are these kids from? Tell me you found out . . . ,” I said.

Tyrell grinned and nodded, then furrowed his eyebrows, showing that even he didn’t quite understand the why of what he was going to say next.

“They’re from Thief Valley Elementary,” he said.

I think all of us must have looked pretty funny just then with our mouths hanging open like idiots. After I collected myself, I handed Tyrell another ten-dollar bill.

“Well, thanks, Tyrell. Nice work as usual,” I said.

“No problem,” Tyrell said, and then seemingly vanished again. I mean, really, he just ducked behind some bushes, but once he was out of sight, it was like he had never been there at all.

Vince and I looked at each other.

“See?” Staples said. “That school is horrible. I’ve got to get my sister out of there before she gets involved in this crap.”

“What now?” Vince asked me.

“I don’t think this changes anything. I still say we stay out of this. This is Jimmy’s mess; he can dig our school out of it somehow.”

“Really? You’re going to let this spiral further and further out of control just like that?” Vince asked.

“I’m not letting anything happen! It’s not my job to keep the whole school out of trouble,” I said. “Besides, what can I do? Dickerson has been all over me. If I try anything, we’ll get expelled, which won’t help anybody.”

I really believed what I was saying. To a point. On one hand, I knew that I was probably the only kid who could fix the problem before the sabotage got so bad that the football games would start getting played with samurai swords instead of a leather ball. But on the other, the Dickerson element was still the ultimate deciding factor. My hands were essentially tied.

I thought Vince realized the same thing because he sighed and then nodded in agreement.

“You can’t just let this go!” Staples said loudly. “I knew that kids at Thief Valley are bad influences. You saw that kid who was basically bench-pressing two first graders the other day! You need to put an end to whatever sort of conflict there is between the two schools because I don’t want Abby getting caught up in stuff like this. She’s a good kid; I don’t want her to end up like me. Plus, it’s going to look really suspicious for me if she somehow ends up in the middle of some serious acts of school warfare right when I’m trying to get back into her life, you know?

“Besides, I told you there was no such thing as halfway out. You guys thought you could reap the rewards of the business without any of the consequences. Well, now you’re right back where you started, looking down the business end of an expulsion. You see what I mean now, don’t you?”

Staples had a point. He’d warned us something like this would happen and we hadn’t listened.

He moved closer to me, so close that his shadow covered my face in darkness. His stare burned right through my head and probably set the grass behind me on fire. I tried to swallow, but my body didn’t seem to be functioning anymore.

“You’re going to help me,” he said quietly. “Because if anything happens to my sister, then I won’t have any reason to let you live anymore, will I? I’ll have nothing left to lose. Not even the state penitentiary will deter me from exacting my revenge on anybody and everybody who could have stopped bad things from happening to my sister. Besides, I hope you realize that when the Suits finally sort all this out, it’s going to lead right back to you guys anyway. Are you really that sure this Jimmy kid won’t squeal?”

I glanced over at Vince. Staples made a compelling argument. That much was for sure. Plus, deep down I knew it really was the right thing to do. But not just for his sister—for all the kids involved. I had been lying to myself all this time. There was no retiring from this. Me trying to argue any further would be like a Great White shark trying to become a vegetarian. Fixing problems is what I do. It’s in my bones, my DNA.

Besides, if I didn’t help, then Staples was going to turn me inside out like a reversible sweatshirt. That by itself kind of made it an easy decision.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

“I was wondering when you’d finally give in,” Vince said. “I think you know we should have never allowed this to happen in the first place. We should have just told Jimmy no.”

“Great!” Staples said, suddenly smiling. Then he punched my arm to show we were all good or something. “So where do we start?”

I rubbed my shoulder wondering why some kids learned to communicate with punching instead of words like the rest of us.

“Well, the next step is to arrange another meeting with Jimmy Two-Tone to see exactly what is going on here and why Thief Valley is even involved. But we need to get to Jimmy someplace other than in the East Wing bathroom. Someplace he’ll be more exposed and vulnerable and won’t have Mitch and Justin there for protection. And especially someplace where I know the Suits won’t be watching.”